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An brook so low you hardly got your feet wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was torn down, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents started memorialising their past. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely prepared. Telling the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the identical inn, going to the identical religious building and sending their kids to the same school.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the entire community, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to withdraw across the brook. For a period, locals could continue to cross over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to present identity papers, although all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his working life building it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how much structure they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are maintained in addition to a collection of exhibits showing the most dramatic moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to care for their fields; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Context

The border between West Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but more than twice as many people (well over 300) died trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k visited every year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and big parking lot – is probable to